“Have I found a sweet piece of ass,” Roger said. “She’s coming over later. Eat your hearts out.”
“There goes my night’s sleep.” Jay groaned.
“I hope this broad is quiet,” Sam said.
Sam and Jay were sitting at the kitchen table having a beer.
“You guys sure are in a crappy mood tonight. Pissed because you’re not getting any.”
“Sure, Rog. We’re not great lovers, like you.”
“I take that back. Jay’s been dipping his wick lately. They say the married ones are the horniest. Can’t get enough.”
“You son of a bitch!” Jay knocked over his chair and spilled the beer from the can trying to get to Roger. He grabbed his roommate and slammed him against the wall. “You keep your fucking mouth shut, you fucking son of a bitch!”
Sam grabbed Jay and dragged him away. “Roger, you stupid shit, watch your mouth.”
Roger slid away from Jay’s grip, rattled, aware he’d violated the code. There were the girls you just slept with, and you could say anything about them. There were the ones you were serious about, and that was a different matter, entirely.
“Jesus, Jay, I didn’t know. Sorry, man.”
“You say another word about her and I’ll mash your fucking face in.”
“I’m sorry. Honest, I’m sorry. OK?”
Sam pulled Jay back to the table, and Roger scooted out of the room. “Come on, Jay, he’s not worth getting pissed about.”
“He’s got a rotten mouth.”
“This is Roger we’re talking about. What did you expect, ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’?” That made Jay laugh.
“I haven’t told anybody,” he said. “Mary and I are going to get married. She’s going to get a divorce from Harry.”
“Hey, that’s great! Congratulations. Did this happen over the weekend?”
Jay grinned. “Yeah, it did.”
Sam looked at him and laughed. “That blush makes you look like a Victorian virgin. Must have been some weekend.”
“It was.”
“This calls for a real celebration. Let me break out the hard stuff.”
He went to the cabinet, got out the brandy and poured a glass for himself and one for Jay. “God, Jay, you’re getting married. That makes me feel old.”
“We’re getting on, old buddy.”
“Christ, yes. Three more years and we’re thirty. We’ll be bald and we won’t get hard-ons.”
“JFK’s forty-six. He’s got hair, and from what I hear, his prick is still active.”
“I knew there was a reason I voted for a Catholic.” Sam raised his glass. “Cheers.”
They touched their glasses and drank.
“Funny,” Jay said. “I’m breaking all my ethnic traditions. I’m happy.”
“Irish Catholics aren’t allowed to be happy?”
“Oh shit, no. Maybe you can be for a while, but you have to pay for it. Like Héloïse and Abelard. He had himself castrated, and she went off to a nunnery. That’s a Catholic love story.”
“And I thought Jewish guilt was bad. A lifetime of misery, OK, but we don’t ever think about cutting it off. A little snip, but not the whole megillah.”
“The saints smiled a lot, but only when someone was burning them alive. Martyrdom is the Irish Catholic idea of having an orgasm.”
“Does Mary know what she’s getting into?”
“She doesn’t mind when I ask her to nail me to the bedpost. The crown of thorns is a bit too kinky for her taste, though.”
“You are going to get hit by a bolt of lightning one of these days.”
“Not me, I’m on good terms with God; I throw a little plant food at him every time I drive by.”
“You make me wonder exactly what Kennedy does in the Lincoln Bedroom.”
“You know that bad back of his?”
“I hesitate to ask.”
“Flagellation. Sometimes he does it himself, sometimes he asks the Secret Service in to give him a few good belts. ’Oh, Agent Snedlock, it hurts so good! Ask not what your country can do for you…”
“Your religion is weird, Jay.”
“Everybody’s religion is weird. That’s the nice thing about religions.”
They were both silent for a minute, and then Jay said, “How the hell did Roger know?”
“Everybody knows, Jay.”
“What?”
“It’s all over the paper. Somebody from the back shop saw the two of you together in D.C.”
“Oh fuck.”
“People were bound to find out. You light up like a Christmas tree when she walks in. People were starting to put two and two together anyhow.”
“It’s not that I want to hide anything, but her husband has to agree to a divorce. The fewer complications, the better.”
Sam nodded. “I understand.”
Jay went into the living room, called Mary and asked if he could pick her up in ten minutes. He drove to a street some blocks away from her house and parked the car.
“A million people in D.C., and we get seen by two people from Belvedere,” she said. “How do we do it?”
“Your luck plus my luck, that’s how. I’m sorry, Mary. This was the one thing I didn’t want to happen.”
“It was bound to, I guess. I only hope Harry doesn’t hear about it secondhand.”
“You have to talk to him.”
“I know. I will, Jay.”
“The longer you put it off, the harder it’s going to be.”
“I know. Jay, maybe we ought to … not be together for a little while. Until I see Harry and talk to a lawyer.”
“I guess that would be the best thing.”
“I’ll get it arranged soon. Then we won’t have to go slinking around, like we’re doing something wrong.”
He felt a sudden surge of panic. What was he doing, sitting in a car at midnight and talking about lawyers and divorces? His life was getting so complicated.
She picked up his mood and said, “Jay, I want to be with you, it’s just that people — well, they always like to think the worst. They like to gossip. We’ll be old hat in a couple of weeks. They’ll have something else to talk about.”
For the next week they saw each other only in the city room; they were careful not to go out for a drink together, careful not to let their bodies touch when they walked by each other. When they spoke, it was formally and only about work. Mary kept busy with a series of meetings in the Negro community; the legal wrangling over the urban renewal plan was continuing, and there was hope for a settlement. She picked up the phone three times to call Harry, but each time she was swept by such feelings of guilt and panic that she put the phone down again. She cursed herself for being a coward and told herself she must do it. She did find time to talk to a lawyer, and the meeting left her depressed. Divorce was so much more complicated and messy than she had imagined.
After one night meeting, she stayed late to finish a story on federal urban renewal regulations, tortuous in their complexity. She struggled with it, trying to make the issues clear but not to oversimplify. By the time the story was done, her head was throbbing. She walked out to her car and opened the door, when suddenly, from behind, a hand gripped her shoulder. She jumped and let out a cry.
“Who were you expecting. The Wolf Man? It’s only me.”
“Jay, you scared me. I thought you left an hour ago.”
“I’ve been waiting out here. What took you so long?”
“I’ve been fighting the renewal piece. God, it’s complicated.”
He stepped close to her and rubbed her shoulder.
“I hate it when a story isn’t coming,” she said. “I’m beat.”
She could feel the tension in him through his fingers; he was like a spring coiled too tightly. When he spoke, his voice was low and urgent. “I’ve been going out of my skull, seeing you every day and not being able to touch you.”
“I know.”
“I feel like a goddamn criminal, like everybody’s watching me.”
“I feel it too.” She looked around to see if anyone could see them where they were standing. There was no one in sight.
“Mary, come with me tonight. We could stop at one of those places on the expressway. No local people go there.”
“Jay, it’s late.”
“I need you, Mary. I need you so bad!”
She felt his fingers tighten on her arm. The throbbing in her head was getting worse. She thought of the bed in her room, with its clean, fresh-smelling sheets and the cushiony pillows, so inviting. But there was an appeal in the grip of his fingers on her arm she could not refuse, so she nodded. “I’ll call my mother and tell her I’m working on a story in D.C. and I’m staying over. She probably won’t believe me.”
Mary drove her car to a secluded spot outside town, parked and locked it. She climbed into Jay’s car; her head was really pounding now. She found an aspirin in her purse and swallowed it without water; it left a bitter taste in her mouth. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep in the car until Jay pulled up in front of a row of squat wooden cabins advertised by a green neon sign that announced: V CAN I S — three letters were dark.
“It’s not fancy, but it’s safe.”
She waited in the car while he registered, then she followed him into one of the cabins. He switched on the overhead light and the room greeted her. Its shoddiness appalled her; bile green peeling paint, pink and green chenille bedspreads tossed across the beds, the furniture a cheap plastic imitating wood.
“Jay, turn out that light, please. It’s too damn bright.”
She went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She peered at the dark patches under her eyes, and the strange yellow of her skin in the light. She dusted powder on her face, but it didn’t help. She washed out her panties and hung them up on the rack to dry — at least she would have clean panties in the morning, and then took out her diaphragm and put it in. The act felt awkward, even obscene.
When she came out, he was naked in bed waiting for her. She undressed quickly and climbed into bed with him. The mattress was uneven; it sagged badly in the middle.
“God, I’ve missed you!”
He began to caress her, and his breath was coming fast. She tried to want his hands on her, but all she could feel was the ache in her head. She did the things she knew he liked, mechanically, but she wished he would hurry. The whole thing seemed ridiculous; he seemed ridiculous. She knew he was trying to hold back, to bring her with him, but finally he said, “I have to come,” and she said yes, but she was still dry, and it was hard for him to enter her.
When it was through he rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling. They lay side by side, not touching.
“It was lousy for you.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. I feel like I’ve — used you.”
“No you haven’t.”
“Yes I have. You didn’t want me. You know what that makes me feel like? A goddamn rapist.”
“I’m just tired. My head aches. It’s not you.”
“I’d rather have you tell me to get lost than to have you lie on your back and think of England.”
That struck her as funny, and she said, “Actually, it was Wee-hawken, New Jersey.”
His sense of humor, however, had vanished.
“I don’t want you to fake it. It makes me feel like a charity case.”
“I wasn’t faking.”
“Oh no?”
“Maybe a little. It seemed — impolite to lie there like a lump.”
“Impolite! Jesus Christ!”
“It’s not a big deal; so one time, it isn’t great. It happens.”
“It makes me feel like shit.”
“You really don’t want me to be honest, Jay. You want me to fake it so your male ego won’t get all bent out of shape.”
“That’s not true.”
They were silent, not touching, not looking at each other. Even though she could no longer see the peeling paint or the bile green walls, she was acutely aware of them. But she could see Sigmund Freud, sitting on one of the plastic chairs.
And so, tell me what you are thinking.
Fuck off.
You are wondering if this is what your life is always going to be, crummy rooms with peeling paint and chenille bedspreads.
No, I am not thinking that.
Yes you are. To be exact, you are thinking of the living room of the man you interviewed, with the Bauhaus chair and the Kerman rug and the very good early Picasso lithograph.
She had gone to the home of a young lawyer who was running for Congress; he was witty and erudite, and he’d flirted with her, mildly. She was not deceived. It was good strategy on his part. But the thought had crossed her mind. I could live like this.
To be precise, you are thinking that there is no law that says everything you have has to be second rate.
I don’t care about that stuff.
Liar. You would love a Kerman and a Picasso.
Maybe an eeeny-weeny Picasso.
And a gigantic Kerman.
Are we talking symbols here?
No. Sometimes a rug is only a rug.
That’s a relief.
And you are thinking that the man lying next to you will never be as good as you want him to be.
No, he’s just — clumsy sometimes.
The man with the Picasso would never be clumsy. He would be sophisticated, and he would know how to take care of things.
No, you can’t make me think bad things about him.
My dear, we are inside your head, remember.
Jay turned to look at her. “Mary, let’s not fight. We’ve got to get out of Belvedere.”
She could see his mouth, laced tight like a pair of shoes, his forehead furrowed. “I don’t want any more of this, meeting in parking lots, sneaking off to crummy dumps. I don’t want this.”
“I know. I don’t either.”
“When are you talking to Harry?”
“This week.”
“Why have you been putting it off?”
“He works a lot of hours. I’ve had trouble reaching him,” she lied.
“You’ve got to do it soon.”
“I will.”
“Will he make waves?”
“I hope not.”
“Me too. Listen, I’ve started looking for another job.”
“Where?”
“New York, I’ve got some contacts there. It has to be somewhere you could find a job too. New York would be a good place.”
“Don’t take just anything, Jay. You’d be miserable at some place where you had to shoot routine stuff.”
“Mary, I make eighty-three fifty a week. I’m twenty-seven years old, twenty-eight in a couple of months. I’ve got to start making some real money. The lawyer says this state is out for the divorce because the only ground is adultery, right? So we have to go to Mexico. You know how much I’ve got saved up? Three hundred dollars, that’s it.”
“I’ve been saving every week since I came to the Blade. With my mother pitching in for food and helping with the mortgage, I have a thousand dollars saved. That’s enough to go to Mexico with.”
“I don’t want to do that. You worked hard for that money.”
“But it’s my money. Harry didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“What were you going to use it for?”
“A college fund, for Karen. But she’s only five years old. That’s kind of silly.”
“No, it’s not silly.”
“Jay, I’m the one who has to get the divorce, why should you have to pay for it?”
“I’m the reason you’re getting the divorce.”
“But if you only have three hundred dollars saved up, that’s not enough.”
“Why not? We could fly down. It only takes a few hours. That’s why they call them quickies, right?”
“If both parties agree, yes.”
“So that’s what we’ll do.”
“I checked on what it costs to fly to Mexico. Three hundred dollars, each way. Not counting hotel and food.”
“Christ, it costs that much?”
“Flying’s expensive. I could fly down myself.”
“No. You’re not flying to Mexico all alone. No, I don’t want that. Jesus H. Christ, this fucking newspaper. If they paid me a living wage, I could have saved up. I don’t spend shit. I got a beat-up old car, and all I have to my name is three hundred lousy dollars!”
She thought, without willing it, of the young lawyer, sipping his cocktail. He would never let life maneuver him into a corner where all he had was three hundred dollars and a beat-up old car.
“Look,” she said, “the money’s in the bank. All I have to do is take it out.”
“No.”
“Oh, Jay, why not?”
“We’re not going to Mexico on your money! I’m not the kind of guy who bums off a woman.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re not bumming off me.”
“Mary, my father brought home a paycheck every week of his life until he got too damn sick to work. Even when he was, with poison spilling through his guts, he brought home money. He was a man.”
“I make money, too. I don’t want anybody slaving away to support me.”
“I’ll get the money somehow.”
“What are you going to do, rob a bank?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“That’s nothing but stupid male ego, that’s all it is.”
She saw his back stiffen and his mouth draw up into a line again. It was so simple. Why was he making it complicated?
But he was angry, and his voice was cold and brittle. “Stupidity is one of my faults. Any others you want to mention?”
“I didn’t say you were stupid. You’re twisting my words around.”
“I may be dumb, but I’m not deaf. I heard what you said.”
“I only said —”
“Skip the explanation. I’m not one of the twelve-year-old minds you great journalists write for.”
“You don’t have to be snotty about it. You’re behaving like a child. You want to make a big deal out of nothing.”
“Faults two and three. Now I’m snotty and childish. You stick the knife in and twist it around, don’t you? No wonder old Harry hit the bottle.”
She sat very still. She hadn’t known he had an instinct for the jugular. The sentence was a hook, and it lodged inside her.
“That’s right,” she said quietly, pulling the sheets up around her. “I was a lousy wife. Why don’t you remind me that I’m a cheater too? I’m married to him, and I sleep with you. That’s a good one to throw in my face, so I won’t forget I’m a slut. Will you remind me ofthat too, Jay?”
She watched him as the anger transmuted into misery. He was shaking his head.
“Oh, Jesus H. Christ, I didn’t mean that. I swear to God, I didn’t mean that.”
“Are you sure?” she said, evenly.
“No, I —” His voice choked. “Christ, that was a rotten thing to say.” He got out of bed and walked up and down beside it, clenching and unclenching his fist.
“I’m such a fucking jerk, I can’t get anything right. I could fuck up a free lunch. Christ!”
He slammed his fist into the headboard with such savagery that she was afraid he had broken his hand. She scrambled out of bed and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t, Jay. Please, don’t!”
He sat down heavily on the bed and stared into the darkness. Her stomach tightened. He looked just like Harry had looked when the world defeated him.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
Harry’s black and bitter stare had nothing to do with her. It was the world that did things to him. Or was it? She had driven him, goaded him, tried to make him what she wanted him to be. Now there was Jay, owning Harry’s stare. It terrified her.
“Jay,” she said. “Jay, am I a bitch?”
He looked at her in surprise. “No,” he said. “Of course you’re not.”
“I’m twenty-five years old, and all I’ve done is make two men miserable. I made Harry so ashamed that all he wanted to do was drown everything out. Am I doing it to you too, Jay? What kind of a person am I?”
“It’s not you, Mary. It’s me. It’s the things I’m — not.”
“What things?”
“I — I don’t cope with things very well. I should have it all under control. Some guys, they seem to be able to do everything right. I fuck things up.”
She put her hand against his face. “Don’t think that about yourself. You’re so bright, and so talented. A lot of people would give everything to do what you can do.”
He held her hand against his face; she could feel his fingers tremble.
“I did one thing right. I love you. I don’t want to mess this up. You’re the best thing I have in my life. But I’m scared shitless that I’m going to lose you.”
“I won’t let you,” she said. “I promise.”
He put his arms around her, and they lay quietly for a while. Then he said, “I’ll take the money, but only as a loan, OK? We’ll set up a special fund for Karen, and I’ll pay it back, like I borrowed it from the bank. How’s that?”
“Great. Why didn’t we think of that before?”
“Because we’re a couple of dummies, that’s why.”
He pulled her to him, and she lay with her face against his chest, suddenly afraid of the world and what it could do to both of them. He stroked her hair, and a memory stirred. Long ago her father, on a night the wind had frightened her, had taken her into his bed and held her. She buried her face in the tangle of hair on Jay’s chest and closed her eyes, and the fear went away.
She awoke later, to find him sitting up in bed, smoking a cigarette. She reached up, took it from his mouth and put it out in an ashtray.
“Bad for you.”
“I know.”
She reached over and ran her finger across his chest, down his belly.
“Good for you?”
“Oh yeah. Doesn’t cause cancer.”
“Thank God.”
He laughed, and she knew it was all right again. She moved her hands across him, exploring, and felt him harden and grow. What a marvelous invention it was; she loved its curves, its weight, its texture. Suddenly the hunger that had been absent earlier returned in a rush.
“I want to do anything, everything,” she said.
He sat on the edge of the bed, and she knelt before him; her lips and tongue found him, and he gave a soft moan of pleasure. Harry thought this the province of whores, but it delighted her to be at once obedient and powerless, and powerful and commanding, in control and abandoned. Then he pulled her to her feet and began to kiss her slowly, her breasts, her lips, her belly. They lay down on the bed, and he said, “I love to do this to you.” He spread her legs, and she thought he was going to enter her, but he bent to kiss her, a kiss so surprising that she began to shiver with pleasure. She had never imagined wanting anyone to do this to her, but now she thought she would die if the pleasure were to stop. The shivering seized her whole body, and she gave herself up to the whirling sensations. He did it to her again and then again, with a touch, a kiss, a bite, until she heard her own voice crying out. She had always thought that men were naturally selfish with sex, but his pleasure was so much a part of her own that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. When they came together, it was explosive. She wondered if the occupants of the next cabins would think people were being murdered in Number 23, with all the caterwauling going on.
Afterwards, as they lay together, she reached up and tousled his hair and said, “You’re quite a stud, you know that?”
His answering smile had more than a hint of male arrogance, and that pleased her.
“You’re a pretty hot ticket yourself, lady.”
“After tonight, Dick, I’m putting Checkers in the trash compactor.”
“Don’t do that, Pat. Those rough edges can irritate your skin.”
“No, Checkers is history. Next time, Dick, you’ll tie me to the bedpost and we’ll do it that way.”
“Take off my tief Pat, you mean really take it off!”
“Checkers can’t do bondage. He hasn’t got any thumbs.”
“You’re a hard woman, Pat.”
“You can put it right back on, I promise.”
They giggled, delighted with themselves, and then he put his head down on the pillow and in a few minutes he was asleep. She watched him; men always looked so vulnerable when they slept, like little boys. She touched a tendril of his hair, gently, and thought that she would wish to die rather than hurt him. She thought, unexpectedly, of having a child with him, a boy who would be a mixture of the best of both of them, the way Karen had her eyes and hair and Harry’s mouth, and his way of tilting his head to look at something.
She thought of Harry standing in the kitchen: “You and Karen, you’re my life.” She had to tell him. But she had discovered that marriage was like a climbing plant that grew inside you; you kept ripping the sprouts of it out, but you only found more and more. Could she ever hunt them all down and destroy them? Why was it that now all she could remember were the good things?
Harry. Why wouldn’t the image of him go away and leave her in peace? She had made her choice. Maybe when he knew. Maybe part of it was guilt, because she hadn’t been able to tell him. He hovered even now above the bed she shared with Jay, a reproachful phantom.
Leave me, Hairy, let me be.
Still he floated, so she ignored him and went to sleep.